Coordination Mechanisms in Human-Robot Collaboration

Robots are envisioned to collaborate with people in tasks that require physical manipulation such as a robot instructing a human in assembling household furniture, a human teaching a robot how to repair machinery, or a robot and a human collaboratively completing construction work. These scenarios characterize joint actions in which the robot and the human must effectively communicate and coordinate their actions with each other in order to successfully achieve task goals. Drawing on recent research in cognitive sciences on joint action, this paper discusses key mechanisms for effective coordination—joint attention, action observation, task-sharing, action coordination, and perception of agency—toward informing the design of communication and coordination mechanisms for robots. It presents two illustrative studies that explore how robot behavior might be designed to employ these mechanisms, particularly joint attention and action observation, to improve measures of task performance and perceptions of the robot in human-robot collaboration.